Never Let Go
by KyoxSakiFan
Summary: He wonders if this is what love really feels like, this strong, overwhelming need to wrap Natsume into his arms and never let go. TanuNatsu.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Natsume Yuujinchou—if I did, to be quite frank with you—Tanuma would have leaned down and kissed Natsume after their bubbly pink shoujo moment. That was the absolute most adorable boy love moment I have ever seen. -_-**

**Damn it, so I realized yesterday that someone had wrote something somewhat like this already (this has been done for about a week now, but I just never typed it, going for the drabbles instead), but I decided to post it anyway. It's a bit different, with the same little underlying theme and style. DX I hate it when this happens!**

**Enjoy anyway.**

**Never Let Go**

…

Natsume gets this weird look on his face sometimes. He narrows his amber eyes, his eyebrows squint together as if he's angry, but he is not because Tanuma has learned to recognize the sharp sting of Natsume's angry face. His mouth turns downward in a frown—a sad bitter frown, like all he wants to do is hide away somewhere where no _human_ eyes can see him.

The world seems to become just a little bit darker every time Natsume isn't happy.

Tanuma finds that he hates that look very much—so much more than he ever thought he could dislike something. He's not one to hate anything really, but he genuinely hates that look.

Natsume makes it one day in the school hallway as he stares out the window at what Tanuma presumes is some sort of spirit and—without thinking at all—he reaches out and brushes the bangs out of Natsume's face, abruptly shaking the horrible expression right off of it. In fact, if the situation was not so serious, Tanuma thinks he could laugh at the bewildered look of disbelief Natsume sends his way.

Tanuma smiles softly at the sandy-haired teen next to him, absently brushing his fingers through the soft locks that he's never really touched until now.

He thinks, for a split second and nothing more, that he feels Natsume tremble beneath his fingertips.

The sensation is gone before he knows for sure.

He discovers it again later when Natsume spends the night at his house after a particularly bad escapade with a youkai. Tanuma frowns as he stares at Natsume, hair damp from his short bath and a sloppy bandage over his bloody arm.

The towel he'd been drying his hair with slips from Tanuma's fingers before he even cares enough to catch it.

Natsume is still staring out the window like he doesn't realize anyone is there. His uninjured hand is stroking the top of Ponta's head, such a habitual thing that Tanuma can almost pretend that nothing's wrong at all.

Natsume's tired eyes tell all.

"You need fresh bandages—those have already bled through."

Natsume whips around as if startled, a sharp intake of breath confirming his suspicions. "T-Tanuma—"

"Does it hurt?" He asks, reaching around Natsume's shoulder for the fresh gauze which, Tanuma frowns; it is obvious Natsume had plans of putting on himself.

"Not really," It is a blunt lie and they both know it and Tanuma is a bit shocked to find that he's tired of being lied to. So, before he can talk himself out of it, he reaches over and pokes Natsume's arm.

"Ouch!" Natsume flinches back, face flushing slightly with embarrassment as he realizes that Tanuma sees right through his lie. Tanuma smiles, the kind of smile that makes Natsume want to flinch away guiltily.

"I don't like being lied to, Natsume," Tanuma murmurs honestly as he carefully strips the bloodied gauze from Natsume's arm. Natsume flinches once more, but Tanuma isn't sure if it's from his wound or the sting of his words.

Tanuma tries not to feel guilty, but the utterly bottomless, desperate look Natsume continues to send his way makes everything all that more difficult. He feels like he's falling into Natsume's eyes, to a place where he'll never return.

He finds that he likes it.

By the time he finishes, his heart is swelling so broadly that he fears it might burst from his chest and swallow everything in its path.

Once again logic fails him and he finds his head resting in the gentle curve of Natsume's neck, sighing and blowing his ebony hair out of his eyes. He feels Natsume tense beneath his touch, skin warm and damp from the water still, white shirt falling loosely down his skin as he hadn't had time to fetch any clothes of his own.

Tanuma sighs once more softly through his nose, an action defined by feel alone, and he feels it again.

Natsume is trembling.

Tanuma tries to resist the urge to look up, afraid of what he'll find there, but can no longer control his curiosity as he slowly raises his eyes.

Natsume is staring out the window again, but with an odd, gentle smile—so much more beautiful than that ugly, bitter grin that makes Tanuma want to rip _everything_ apart just to make it go away. He doesn't know what to do because it leaves him sort of breathless.

He's never felt this way before.

He wonders if Taki makes Natsume smile like that too.

After a moment of pondering, he decides not to think on it anymore—he doesn't like the ugly twist in his chest.

Instead he opts to touch Natsume as much as he can. He makes it a point to reach out and brush the hair from Natsume's eyes, to lean lightly on his shoulder when he's talking, to brush his knee against Natsume's even as he smiles and engages in conversation with Taki.

He finds that he's growing addicted to those little tremors, so much more lovely than that sad look Natsume gets sometimes as he stares off in the distance. It's almost enough to make him lose faith in humanity, to know that anyone could be so cruel to someone so unbearably kind and wonderful.

He wonders if this is what love really feels like, this strong, overwhelming need to wrap Natsume into his arms and never let go…the need to protect.

Tanuma is smiling, Natsume is talking—something about some spirit or another that keeps hanging outside the windows during class and distracting him from the lectures—and Taki is staring knowingly at him with warm, understanding eyes even as she nods along with Natsume's story.

Tanuma's smile softens as he returns her gaze, touched by her thoughtfulness, and she continues to smile back. He loves her too, he supposes, just in an entirely different way than he loves Natsume. He wants to shield her too, but Natsume makes him feel like he can't breathe.

One day, while he is over at Natsume's house on their night off from school, he realizes that his advances have been noticed for what they are.

He realizes this because—as he absently leans forward to thread his fingers through Natsume's soft hair—Natsume reaches out and gingerly grabs his wrist, not enough to hurt, but enough to be firm at the same time.

Tanuma does nothing but stare, startled, but Natsume continues without hesitating more than a moment. Tanuma finds his fingertips being led, tracing along the curve of Natsume's chin before resting carefully and deliberately on his pulse.

The rapid thumping under his fingers makes Tanuma smile and shiver at the same time because why does Natsume always do these stupid things that make him so breathless?

Natsume looks away, smiling and flushing, as Ponta slips through the crack in the window, face red and sputtering about sake and squid.

"You didn't steal it, did you sensei?"

And they're squabbling, just like they always do and not for the first time Tanuma wishes his eyes could see what Natsume's can.

At the same time, he understands everything and knows that it's enough for Natsume just to be by his side.

It becomes obvious after a little while that Natsume is very unaccustomed to this kind of human touch. This is not surprising to Tanuma at all because he's heard Natsume crying in the night when he can't tell himself to stop, because he's seen the look on his face whenever someone so much as gives him an odd look in the hallway.

It's become such a commonplace occurrence for Tanuma to follow him home now that Shigeru and Touko wonder if they should make up a spare bedroom for him.

He has no need or want for it, though. He enjoys these nights, the ones where he leans every little bit closer, where Natsume hesitantly begins to pull him near, to lean on him as his breaths even out into sleep.

He wonders if Natsume feels as fierce and protective as he does.

He gets his answer several weeks later in the form of Natsume, white as a sheet, as Tanuma stares up at a canopy of trees with surprise, feeling groggy, as if his world has been tugged upside down.

"N-Natsume?" He murmurs, wincing as he pulls himself to lean against a tree, staring into eyes of molten honey as he slowly adjusts to the darkening light of evening. "What happened?"

And suddenly his arms are full of a frantic Natsume, eyes wide, hands trembling, muscles tense and angry—not at him, but at the spirit who had attacked him and his own failure to protect that which he holds so very dear to him.

And Tanuma feels like the lowest human being ever because he can feel the thumping of Natsume's heart in his chest and it's surrounding him—

"Don't ever do that again," Natsume says suddenly, fiercely, honey eyes snapping up to meet his own, "never again!"

And it suddenly comes back to him in amazing clarity—a shadow, large and looming, the sense of danger, the harsh and unnatural gust of wind, the sudden desperation surging in his veins…the need to protect!

Because he can do it too, he can!

He remembers the pain and Natsume's screams.

"I won't promise that," Tanuma smiles, ignoring Natsume's shocked gaze and the thick coolness that washes over his body as it begins to drizzle down on them. "My body moved on its own. I told you—I want to protect you in every way that I can. I want to help. You shouldn't have to do everything on your own."

He supposes that a first kiss isn't supposed to be like this—positively soaked in rain water, knees covered in mud (and some blood, Tanuma realizes, but he's too numb from sensation to wonder what point on his body it's coming from), but they've never really been typical, so it's okay.

Natsume gasps as Tanuma's fingers ghost over his back, unconsciously arching into the unfamiliar touch, skin trembling with new sensation even as Tanuma steals his every desperate breath away.

Natsume—Tanuma ponders even as he pants and whispers and notices Ponta slipping off from the corner of his eye—is the very embodiment of love. Fierce, loyal to a fault, enchanting and so damn electrifying in a strangely calm kind of way. He doesn't think he could be in love with anyone else even if he tried.

Tanuma resolves to wrap Natsume in his arms and never let go.


End file.
